


Yes, Bruce is a Doctor but Not the Kind Tony Stark Really Needs

by kendra



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Science Bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 17:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kendra/pseuds/kendra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony has a problem and turns to Bruce for advice. Too bad for Bruce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yes, Bruce is a Doctor but Not the Kind Tony Stark Really Needs

**Author's Note:**

> Very Bruce centric. Lots of science bros feels. First Avengers fic. I'm not too great with words, haha.

“Bruce, I think I’m in love with Steve.” 

Bruce sighs, “Good morning to you too, Tony.” 

Tony doesn’t reply, instead choosing to flop all of himself onto a desk that’s, thankfully, just covered with a little bit of research papers. Instead of, y’know, a corrosive acid or something. Because that’s exactly what he needs right now - a burnt, whining Tony Stark instead of just a whining Tony Stark. Bruce takes off his glasses and tucks them into his chest pocket. “What has lead you to this hypotheses?”

Tony’s face is mashed against the woodwork of Bruce’s favorite desk – “Tony, if you drool on that, I’m going to hurt you.” – and his words reflect the fact, coming out muffled against the press of his cheek. “I can’t stop thinking about him. Ever since Pepper and I ended it, I’ve just become…obsessed with him.” 

“Tony, she broke up with you.” 

“It was a mutual decision.” 

“You moped for three months, Tony.” Bruce sits down on his favorite thinking stool. “Loki brought you home twenty minutes after he kidnapped you, stating that you were too pathetic to kill and too whiney to keep.” 

Tony waves his hand, making half embarrassed, dismissive noises. Bruce pointedly ignores these motions and continues; the memories of that day were very, very fond to him and all of the other Avengers. “He even said that your sadness was making his fair Asgardian skin wrinkle and asked Thor to let him know when you stopped being a drama queen.” 

Tony groans, pushing himself off of the desk. Bruce catches him using his sleeve to wipe up a little spittle. 

“Loki. Resident drama queen of Asgard and Midgard alike called you a drama queen.” 

“Can we get back to my problem?” Tony turns and jumps onto the desk, scooting back so his short legs could kick back and forth. _“Please?”_

Bruce knows that the 'please' was sarcastic and chooses to ignore it. “Yes, fine. Although you’re ruining my nostalgia. That was one of my favorite times here with the Avengers.” 

“Even more than the Prank War of ’97?” 

Bruce smiles lightly. “I find it amusing that you call it ‘of ‘97’ when it happened for three weeks in July.” 

“The Prank War of July? C’mon now, Banner. That’s just lame.”

“Steve?” 

Bruce is amused at how Tony’s eyes light up at the name. It’s charming and Bruce has to wonder why Steve isn't already all over Tony. 

“Yes. I love him. But I need a plan to tell him. Or convince him to love me back.” 

Bruce is suddenly aware of why Tony is sitting in his lab, informing him of information that most of the Avengers already knew - with the exception of the good Captain himself. 

“Tony, I am not going to help you plot your way into Cap’s pants.” 

"Plot is such a nasty word. It holds negative connotations. Just - convince my way into Capcicle's pants." 

Bruce sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "Um, number one: stop calling him stupid nicknames." 

Tony purses his lips, like he's thinking it over, but there's a distinct pink tinting his cheeks. Bruce didn't get his doctorate by being unobservant. "That's how you flirt, isn't it?"

"No!"

"You pull his pigtails!" Bruce starts to laugh, loud and long, as Tony jumps down from the desk. He stares at Bruce, merely chuckling now, and sneers, opening his mouth - probably to sass him - until he thinks better of it. 

"Shut up, Bruce," Tony decides to go with before stalking from the lab. "And I just want you to know that if you didn't have sliding doors, there would be lots of slamming right now." 

"Duly noted, Tony," Bruce mutters, turning back to his findings. 

-

"Operation: Seduce Captain America is failing, Bruce. _Failing_ ," Tony drawls as he strolls into the lab. Bruce doesn't move from his position, crouched in front of a beaker. 

"Did you stop calling him mean names?" 

"Capcicle is not a mean name. It's merely an observation." 

Bruce rolls his eyes and doesn't reply. From his peripheral, he sees Tony jump back onto his favorite desk. Mental note: remove precious material from desk until further notice. 

"But," Tony starts, sounding like a petulant child, "I stopped calling him "mean" names." 

"Good because Steve was bullied pretty terribly pre-serum and probably doesn't differentiate the difference between friendly - or, rather, flirty - nicknames and straight out insults." 

Tony's silent for so long that Bruce slowly straightens out and casts a nervous glace to the other man. "Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?" 

"I thought I was talking to the second smartest person in the room at the time." Bruce smirks. "I have been wrong before." 

"Stop." Tony puts up a hand, stopping Bruce's self-deprecating tirade. "There's no hate in this lab." 

"Yes, Tony." Bruce returns to his original position, holding a pen to the clipboard in his hand. 

"...I don't think he liked being called "honeybear" instead." 

Bruce sighs heavily. 

"He turned this funny shade of red and gave me the Captain America is Disappointed look." 

Bruce has been on the receiving end of those looks whenever The Other Guy comes out after Clint's taken the Chinese that was specifically for him - labeled and all! - with nothing but a note attached to an arrow saying "IOU, cutie." Bruce did not like those notes or those looks. (Looking back at it, how the hell the entire mansion wasn’t flattened yet is a wonder.) 

"I saw that shudder! Exactly. So I did the only thing I could think of..."

"You said some sexual innuendo and hid in your lab until you were sure that Cap was on his afternoon run where you then slunk down here to bitch and moan?" 

Bruce looks at Tony out of the corner of his eye and that petulant child look is back. It's endearing. (So endearing that Bruce will consider actually wearing that stupid "Science Bros for Life" shirt that Tony custom made in a matching set. Wearing it to bed, that is. At the moment, it's hidden in the very back of his closet underneath random junk he picked up from Aruba and his first microscope.) 

"...Yes." 

Bruce doesn't reply, just records how the chemicals react to each other. 

"Bruuuuuuceee," Tony whines, sliding very ungracefully off the desk, splaying his legs open once he reaches the floor. Bruce thinks that Tony looks like a wonton slut like that; Tony's never held his tongue before, why should he?

"You look like a wonton slut like that," Bruce remarks idly. Tony slowly slides his legs closed and rolls to his side. 

"You're very close to being demoted." 

Bruce huffs a laugh. 

"No, seriously. I'm gonna go to Thor and ask him how to seduce Steve, then we're going to drink Asgardian mead, and our friendship shall be spoken of through all nine realms!" Tony sits up and crosses his legs. Bruce feels like Tony resembles a child now, being unable to sit still. He's probably just about to burst from being celibate for so long. 

"You'll just be second to Loki," Bruce replies. Tony sighs. "At least with me, you'll never be second. Well, in the friendship department." 

Tony sits straighter and stares at Bruce through long lashes. "I'm your best friend?" 

Bruce sets down the clipboard, declares the experiment inconclusive, and sits in his thinking stool. "Tony, I live with a Norse god who has a brother complex as big as he is. An assassin gives me wary looks when she thinks I can’t see her. A living legend who spends much too much time asking me annoying questions. An archer that steals my food and thinks that compliments will make up for it. And to top it all off, I'm pretty much on house arrest with SHIELD watching me like I might crack at any moment. The fact you treat me like Bruce and not an exposed nerve like I feel I am, you're easily at the top of the list." 

Tony's looking at him like he's brought the second coming before he's scrambling up and crowding in his space. Bruce feels his blood pressure start to skyrocket but Tony merely wraps his arm around his shoulders and gives him a good squeeze. 

"You're my best friend too, Bruce," Tony answers. Bruce awkwardly pats Tony's back, unfamiliar with the human touch after willingly depriving himself of it for so long. It feels - nice. "Well, behind Rhodey. And Pepper. Sorta." 

"I get it," Bruce says once Tony steps away. They smile at each other for a moment before Tony's brown eyes spark and he suddenly rushes from the room, nearly tripping over an uprooted cord. 

"You didn't see nothing!" he cries back, the sliding door slipping shut behind him. 

"Right." 

-

"Operation: Seduce Captain America has taken a turn for the better!" 

Bruce sighs and gives up on continuing his work. He looks up and Tony has his arms in the air, like he's celebrating a great triumph. It had been nearly two weeks since Tony's last complaint about – and almost a month and a half since starting - O:SCA as Bruce took to calling it (because he felt about thirty levels of uncomfortable thinking 'seduce' and ‘Captain America’ in the same thought; he was a little bit paranoid that Steve would blow through the wall itself and demand that Bruce stop thinking about him in such an obscene fashion. ...What? You try living with five maniacs and not start to go a little crazy as well.) 

"You took it upon yourself to teach Steve more about the modern world, not only benefiting yourself with your silly little endeavor but also relieving some of the stress I feel from Steve’s constantly questioning?” 

Tony's arms flop to his side. "How the fuck do you do that?" 

Bruce shrugs. "Smartest guy in the room." 

Tony doesn't reply; he merely makes a mocking facial expression and jumps up on the desk (now fully clean and waxed, hoping Tony will jump too hard one day and slide right off the back, hopefully teaching the man-child not to sit on things not made for sitting. And of course it doesn't work.). Bruce sits himself in the chair he brought down from his room; it was plush and comfortable and since Tony won't leave him alone, thinking that he was actually participating in O:SCA, Bruce feels he should be as comfortable as possible. 

"We went on a not-date in Central Park. He asked about things and I answered. It was pretty fun, considering." 

"Considering that you couldn't cop a feel?"

"Shush." Tony glares. "I wasn't finished. Considering...that I couldn't cop a feel." 

Bruce smirks. 

"We saw a gay couple." 

"Really?" Bruce asks lightly, although the researcher in him is begging to ask more questions and obtain more information so he can draw conclusions. 

"He asked if it was still illegal. Told him it wasn't. Told him about Prop 8 and the controversies around it but that it wasn't illegal. He seemed pretty pleased about that. Then he said some patriotic shit that I couldn't hear over the sound of his stupid fucking smile and his blue eyes." 

Although Tony's spiel is told in an annoyed, dismissive tone, Bruce can see the affection etched into Tony's face. It's so damn endearing. Tony was practically brimming with excitement and it would take an idiot not to realize how head over heels he was for Steve.

"Maybe try a few more not-dates. It's better to be friends before lovers," Bruce says lightly, trying not to appear as if he actually considering helping in O:SCA. 

"We are friends," Tony says defensively. 

"Tony, it's been almost a year and I'm pretty sure he spent most of that year thinking that you hated his guts." 

"Why do you say that?" 

"Do you know that kicked puppy look that Thor gets?"

"The one where you just want to find Loki, wrap him in gift wrap and give him to Thor while presenting him his own pop tart factory?"

"Yeah, that’s the one." (Because that's _exactly_ what that look caused everyone to feel; he’s pretty sure that Natasha had once tried to figure out if she could bill SHIELD for the construction, workers, and supplies before she came back to herself as the look faded.) 

"What about it?" 

"That's how Cap would look at you when you left the room after a good round of hair pulling." 

Tony's quiet for a long moment before he sighs, crossing his arms. "It's not my fault that I'm emotionally stunted." 

Bruce throws himself against the back of his chair, hand pressed to his chest, mouth agape. Tony jumps down from the desk, worry etched into his face, and starts to walk to over to him before Bruce says, "I can't believe there's no one else here to hear you utter those words. You finally admit it!" 

Tony pauses mid-step before setting it down hard, angrily crossing his arms and cocking his hip. "You are an _ass_." 

Bruce laughs and rights himself in the chair, crossing his ankle over his knee, wrapping his hand around it. "This is my official advice for O:SCA: tortoise and the hare." 

Tony's eyes squint for a moment before the spark flickers in his eyes and he groans, "Ugh, but that's gonna take so long!" 

Bruce shrugs, standing, "That's all you're going to get out of me. I'm hungry; want to watch and see if The Other Guy comes to visit?" 

"I don't think Clint's eaten your Thai," Tony answers but his eyes are alight and before they hit the kitchen, he stops to grab his suit. 

(Much to Bruce's relief and Tony's dejection, The Other Guy does not come to visit, merely because the note Clint left caused his brain to sputter out and lose connection, the hunger instantly replaced with butterflies. Thankfully, Bruce's higher function was still spinning well enough to destroy the note before an overly nosey Tony Stark got a hold of it.)

-

"I'm considering scrapping Operation: Seduce Captain America." 

Bruce rolls his eyes, blearily blinking at the experiment in front of him. He hasn't been asleep in almost 57 hours - he feels it to his very bones; he's on the brink of a breakthrough - and he has no patience for Tony's bullshit right now. The look in Bruce's eyes must have told Tony enough because the man stops and blinks a few times before relaxing his whole stance. Bruce feels himself mimic it. He takes a deep soothing breath and flexes his fingers. 

Inside, The Other Guy calms as well but if he has to sit through one of Tony's tirades and play doctor (the type that Tony Stark needs but Bruce is not qualified for), he's going to lose it and Tony's mansion will finally succumb to the power of the Hulk.

"JARVIS!" Bruce calls. He knows about JARVIS, how he works and all the other things that he could do to assist him but Bruce works better by himself. He rarely acknowledges the AI.

"Yes, Dr. Banner?" JARVIS replies. Tony opens his mouth but Bruce holds up a hand, silencing him. Tony relaxes again, slouching his shoulders and shoving his hands in his pockets. 

"Could you please tell Captain Rogers that his presence is needed in my lab? ASAP." 

"Of course, Doctor." There's a silence while JARVIS does what is asked. "The Captain has been alerted and will be here momentarily." 

"Good." 

Half a minute later (Bruce knows; he counted), Steve comes bursting through the sliding door, shield in hand, shoulders taught and ready for a battle. 

"What's up?" Steve asks, his Captain America voice on, no hint of his "aw, shucks" demeanor when around Tony. 

"Steve, thank you for coming so quickly," Bruce sits in his chair and he feels it, the thick pull of sleep, lured even more with the almost instantaneous slumbering of The Other Guy inside. (At least he can breathe easier for a few moments.) 

"Is he going to?" Steve whispers to Tony and Tony doesn't reply, merely shrugging. 

"No," Bruce says. "As long as you get Tony out of here and he _stays out_ for a little while."

"Ooookay...?" Tony says. Bruce looks up and smiles, probably looking a little demented. (Did he say living with crazies makes you crazy?)

"Steve, Tony loves you. Tony, Steve loves you." 

Both men stand shock still, both refusing to look at the other and both turning a nice shade of red. 

"Now that this is settled, please take your responses outside and don't bother me for a few days." 

Bruce vaguely sees Tony snatch Steve's loose hand before he succumbs to the glorious relief of sleep.

-

After a two day sleep (and his experiment failing in the end) Bruce makes his way from the lab, determined not to reenter for at least a week. 

(He should probably let Tony know about the mess he created though. Thankfully, The Other Guy was very easy to soothe this time around, just destroying a few tablets, hang-down monitors, his research table and his chem set. All easily replaceable and he was proud of The Other Guy for leaving his favorite desk intact. [Although a part of him thinks that it's because the Hulk wants to see Tony slide off that desk as much as he does.]) 

He walks into the kitchen to see Steve and Tony necking against the island like teenagers. He rolls his eyes, scratches at his stomach and opens the large French-door fridge. "I see everything worked out fine in the end." 

They both jump, causing Bruce to snicker into his bottle of green tea. Steve tries to escape but Tony doesn’t let go. 

"Yes. Um," Steve clears his throat. "Thank you for you help, Doctor." 

"It's Bruce, Cap," he says idly, searching for Clint's stash of cookies. (Revenge is sweet after all.) 

"Science Bros look out for each other, right?" Tony says, smiling. Bruce glances at Steve then back at Tony. 

"Right."

"...I'm confused," Steve says, finally giving in to Tony's insistent tugging and lets himself be pulled back in, not kissing but firmly in each other's spaces. 

"It was just some stupid plan," Tony murmurs. Steve freezes and Bruce figures this must be why people turn to evil; the feeling of successfully making people look foolish sure is satisfying. (Although he probably couldn’t handle all the death and mayhem that came with the area.) 

"You promised not to tell him!" Steve cries, turning puppy dog eyes on Bruce.

"Tell him what?" Tony asks.

"About Operation: Stark," Steve replies flippantly, wounded eyes still firmly on Bruce.

Bruce takes a very long swig of his tea to hide his grin. Tony gapes for a moment. "No, Bruce helped me out with Operation: Seduce Captain America." 

There's a few heartbeats of silence before Steve says, "That is a terrible mission name. It has the objective right in the title. If someone had heard that, they would have known what the mission was right off the bat!" 

"Oh yeah? Well what the hell is Operation: Stark?" 

"A better name, for one! And, for you information -"

Bruce slinks out of the room, strolling into Clint's - the man looks surprised but pleased - and quietly thinks back to the day, almost two months ago, when Steve had came to him – “Tony's best friend” - looking for advice to get Tony to look his way. 

Bruce leans against Clint's shoulder and thinks that he wasn't really the smartest guy in the room, he was just the one holding all the cards. 

-

**Author's Note:**

> Reez pointed out that I misspelled "wanton" and insisted that I leave it like that because the mental image was funny; I agreed. So, if that bothers anyone, sorry. ;P


End file.
